Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

The Bush administration cannot account for millions of emails and a federal judge upheld a ruling (via) “that the White House’s Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.” It had complied with FOIA requests in the past, but that policy was changed when Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed this case. Note: Policy change. The president could simply change the policy back, but has not and has given no indication that he will. All those nice words he mouthed upon taking office certainly seem to have soured. The fine oratory isn’t fooling civil liberties groups, though.

Lanny Davis has concluded that Dick Cheney should be indicted. When a member in good standing of the Beltway political class adopts that position it’s noteworthy; the Inner Sanctum is the last and biggest obstacle to an investigation of Bush-era war crimes. Maybe disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters will provide some needed pressure against the message coming from the look forward, keep walking keepers of conventional wisdom.

Harry Reid opposes closing (via) Guantánamo with the almost unbelievably dishonest claim that “We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.” And he doesn’t know how to shepherd legislation through the Senate either. He is a craven, ineffectual joke of a politician and a disgrace to the Senate Democrats he leads. (Which is meant to be an indictment of them as well - they chose him to be their leader.) Perhaps the best portrait of the man was painted by The Editors:

When The Editors asked me to abandon my responsibilities and play second fiddle to an unpopular, corrupt ex-President for this nonsense awards post, I said “No! No! A thousand times no!” For if one does not have principles and the courage of one’s convictions, then one has nothing at all. And that’s the story of how I came to vice-host this awards post.

The FCC doesn’t want to be left out of the fun in expanding the surveillance state so it has staked its claim to warrantless wiretapping power by invoking the Communications Act of 1934, which has to be the awesomest stretch of logic since the set of regulations adopted by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in 2004 that shut down state attempts to regulate banks.

Conor Friedersdorf wondered how anyone could think Obama is attempting a socialist dictator takeover of the U.S. AND be in favor of expansive, unaccountable executive power. Olympic caliber mental gymnastics follow as various commenters attempt to establish that they want the president to be an authoritarian abroad but constrained at home. Others attempt to point out that if, say, you allow the president to declare citizens inside the country to be enemy combatants and to imprison them indefinitely without charge - much less a trial - in the name of Keeping America Safe then you are basically depending on the good will of the leader and not Constitutional safeguards to guarantee your rights. (Which is the definition of a nation of men and not laws.) They shot back that when they approved of ceding those powers they had no idea that a president Obama would one day have them at his disposal, to which I can only make the following hilariously obvious point: When you give power away you leave decisions about its use to those you give it to! The whole foreign power/domestic power construct doesn’t really survive contact with reality. No matter how strictly you try to circumscribe it, power is power and grey areas will spring up almost immediately. And as others point out, if Obama was really as scary as they say then he poses a much more grave and immediate threat to the country than all the terrorists in the world; surely getting rid of those expansive powers would be the single most urgent task right now - even more important than dealing with the threat posed by The Terrorists, right?

UNPACKING JANE On page 316 Mayer reports on how a group of lawyers led by Philip Zelikow attempted what they called “The Big Bang” - a secret proposal to end the worst of the detention and interrogation abuses. They begin to move the proposal up the chain of command at the State and Defense departments, with some success. Then on pp.218-9 she describes the culmination of their efforts:

The Big Bang proposal reached Bush, two sources said, proving that as of the summer of 2005, he knew there were senior officials inside his administration, including a deputy defense secretary, who thought the war on terror was being undermined by his detention policies, and that Guantánamo needed to be closed. If he read that report, he also knew that there were credible allegations of CIA abuse and calls for accountability. Nonetheless, said one of its sponsors, “The Big Bang just died on the vine.”